Education-themed Journal Club

A Journal Club has run previously as part of the Faculty Pedagogic Research Group. For the next meeting, the intention is to run the Journal Club separately and open up the invite to the entire Faculty. If you are interested in meeting in early December (week 11) to discuss an article of relevance to teaching, learning and assessment then please indicate your availability via the Doodle poll here and by Monday 23^rd November.

If you are interesting in joining the Faculty Pedagogic Research Group then please email p.denton@ljmu.ac.uk.

Curriculum Enhancement Projects 2015/16

This scheme is funded by the University’s Teaching and Learning Academy (TLA) and will change slightly this year. There will be one call per academic year and this is expected around January/February. Projects will be invited to build-on previous enhancement projects (adopter mode) or to request funding for new activities that address perceived needs (response mode). The intention is that funding will only be released for projects requiring upwards of £5K in funding. As in previous years, any activities that involve multiple programmes, Schools, or Faculties will be best able to demonstrate the ‘scalability’ criterion that is used when judging claims.

Student Attendance Monitoring

A reminder that staff can access electronic attendance records online. Under the current attendance policy, students are able to request authorisation for absences using an online form. Upon submitting this, they receive an email and here is an example of the type of receipt that they obtain.

Students are able to see their attendance records in Blackboard and a screen shot was circulated in LTA Update 19/10/15. At the request of the Faculty, and since Tuesday 10^th November, absences where a student has notified the University using the online form appear as an hourglass icon (pending) rather than a red cross (unauthorised absence). Once a decision to authorise has been made, ‘pending’ changes to either ‘unauthorised absence’ or ‘authorised absence’.

The Faculty Registrar, Graham Sherwood, has kindly agreed to decide whether or not to authorise all pending absence notifications in 2015/16. An emerging view in the Faculty is that when the attendance policy is revised, we should not be offering to authorise absences as students might confuse this with our EC procedures. Rather, we should simply note that we have been notified of the absence and take appropriate steps if the number of notified absences becomes too high. If you have any comments around the attendance policy or electronic recording then please email them to me.

Advertising Your Availability Online (updated version)

A simple program has been developed that can display your availability on a webpage (example) using data automatically extracted from MS Outlook. The webpage shows any times and dates when you are free by looking for appointments with the subject or location ‘mo’ (= my office). The code has recently been updated to reflect the fact that the M:\LJMUWEB folder is no longer accessible online and it may be found here.

Mathematics Resource and Support Centre (MRSC)

The MRSC has relocated from the Henry Cotton Building to Rm 325 James Parson Building. It offers 'drop-in' advice and support sessions to both undergraduates and postgraduates. Tutors in the Centre can help students who:

· have concerns about mathematics or statistics, including SPSS,

· need to refresh mathematical or statistical skills, knowledge or understanding,

· need additional help with the mathematical or statistical element of their studies.

The MRSC is open 12-3pm Mon-Thu, 12-2pm Fri, and 4-6pm Tue. Further details may be found at: https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/students/supporting-your-study/study-support

Research and Practice in Higher Education Seminar

The next seminar takes place 4.00pm – 5.30pm, Wednesday 25th November within the Roscoe Boardroom, Egerton Court. Entitled, ‘Scaling up Learning Analytics’, it will be presented by Dr Rebecca Ferguson, Senior Lecturer and Data Wrangler at the Open University. The flyer for the event gives further information, including how to book a place.

LJMU Share and Innovations in Practice (Thanks to Virendra Mistry, TLA)

The Teaching and Learning Academy (TLA) has developed LJMU Share to archive education-related materials developed by staff from across the institution. At present, it mainly includes presentations from the 2015 LJMU Teaching and Learning Conference. The site has a search function and will provide a useful means for checking up on existing work in any educational areas that are of interest to you.

The TLA’s Pedagogic Journal, Innovations in Practice (IiP), is now available online. There is still some work to do around the electronic submission elements of the system but the current site does give a flavour of how this publication might develop. It will be possible, for example, to find articles within the journal via Google. The IiP website uses the Open Journals Software that is open source freeware and might also be of interest to colleagues.

University Working Groups

Colleagues within the Faculty sit on some active University working groups that are considering changes in academic policy for 2016/17. If you have any particular comments relating to the following areas then please refer them to the associated Faculty representative:

· Personal Tutoring: Anna Law and Amanda Boddis

· Extenuating Circumstances: Becky Murphy and Ian Bradshaw

· Assessment Boards: Phil Denton, Jason Kirby and Dave Richardson

Timing of Freshers’ Fair

Colleagues will be aware that the two-day Freshers’ fair 2015 coincided with Week 1. Although this scheduling was not ideal, LiverpoolSU did confirm the date with University in advance and Jamie Bennett (Vice President Academic Quality) outlines the reasoning below:

LiverpoolSU work solely to ensure that students love student life whilst at LJMU – we want to ensure that all students have a positive experience in all aspects of student life. Holding the Freshers’ Fair in the first week allows all students to attend, not just first years, which is important because we want to make our services as accessible as possible to students throughout their university journey – not just when they start. Freshers’ Fair was a hugely successful event this year with over 10,500 students in attendance over two days. It’s really important to us that this event is welcoming and accessible to as many students as possible. That’s why we continue to take on feedback from students and LJMU staff on how to make it so; including discussions we had with timetabling back in January who agreed that this would not be disruptive. We’re really pleased with how many LJMU staff built the fair into their week 1 plans with some even taking their classes down to the exhibition centre. We have historically held this during week 1 as it allows returning students to attend as well – this is also important as it is returning students who run the stalls for our Sports Clubs and Societies. Returning students are able to support and promote the activities they are passionate about. We held the event over 2 full days to ensure students could attend without missing timetabled sessions. We made sure to hold it on a Wednesday to ensure that it included the Wednesday afternoon non-timetabled hours. Our marketing team (who run the event) have asked us to relay that they welcome any feedback from LJMU colleagues for ensuring the event is accessible and successful.

Blackboard Student View (thanks to Chris Gillies)

Since the most recent upgrade, the student preview mode button is visible in the top right corner of every module in Blackboard.

This is an excellent, long called for addition to Blackboard that allows colleagues the facility to both view and engage with Blackboard modules from the perspective of a student. This, in turn, should help remove some of the mystery about what students can see on Blackboard, whilst also allowing for fuller experimentation with interactive features, such as discussion boards and blogs. This could also be an invaluable tool when colleagues want to demonstrate to students exactly how to complete a process in Blackboard.

Dr Philip Denton BSc PhD PGCE PGCert SFHEA
Faculty Associate Dean (Education)

Lecturer in Physical Chemistry

Faculty of Science
James Parsons Building Byrom Street, Liverpool, L3 3AF
t: 01512312035 e: P.Denton@ljmu.ac.uk

Maintained by Philip Denton. Last Update: 18/11/2015.